Of Silence and Warm Hands
by kaori54432
Summary: (Terminally ill!SMQ fic) The news hit her like a truck. Hodgkin's Lymphoma? Cancer of the lymph nodes and blood? He only had a month left to live? What? Cancer was so overused in dramas but for someone you know to be diagnosed with it by the time they'd reached stage 4? (Read the full summary inside;389 characters isnt enough and if i included the sentence after, it wouldn't fit)
1. Ch1: Warmth

Of Silence and Warm Hands

Summary: (Terminally ill!SMQ fic) The news hit her like a truck. Hodgkin's Lymphoma? Cancer of the lymph nodes and blood? He only had a month left to live? What? Cancer was so overused in dramas but for someone you know to be diagnosed with it by the time they'd reached stage 4? A cancer that weakened the immune system so much so that cancer wouldn't be the only thing he'd come down with that would kill him in the end? A treatment that weakened the immune system even further all while digging them deep into debt, should they choose to pursue it? What?

CH.1 Warmth

Su Muqiu was a responsible and kind older brother and Su Mucheng knew it best. She'd always found warmth in those hands of his.

Or, maybe, the warmth was something else. She wouldn't have known then. Looking back, it was probably a hint at what was to come. Alas, the past was the past. There would be nothing they could do about what happened then.

Back then, she'd dismissed it as natural body warmth. After all, living bodies were warm. He didn't seem sick then. Of course, back then, they didn't know that those small and seemingly harmless symptoms were actually warning signs that would turn out to be something so serious.

One could easily infer that maybe they themselves were just cold. It was winter then, when she held his hand and looked up at him, following his lead as they walked home together that day. She'd mentally noted that his hands were warm. It was, after all, unlikely to detect a fever from feeling up one's hands. If anything, it would've been easier to detect it by feeling him up elsewhere.

Maybe, the whole thing hadn't started later than then, but she did take advantage of that warmth. She'd snuggled up to him many times, as if he were a human heater, when she was cold. Pieces of furniture he'd stayed on were notably hot but things that were coated in fabric tended to be good at retaining heat just as metal would be good at absorbing it, so those signs then were treated like they were nothing.

Was it warmth though? There was a fine line between warmth and heat. A fever could be determined by being even a little over one degree Celsius of what would be considered the natural body temperature. Getting too hot would mean the body melts itself from the inside but he never seemed sluggish then. What was considered a regular body temperature also seemed to change from species to species. As for humans, it was thirty-seven degrees Celsius or ninety-eight point six degrees Fahrenheit. Not like they'd have known then, as they wouldn't have had access to a thermometer. They were just two orphans who were kicked out of an orphanage, after all. Even with the addition of Ye Xiu to their little family, none of them had noticed then.

Now, it was far too late. The symptoms seemed like nothing, but as it turned out, it was something that they wouldn't have thought would be the problem. Fevers? That came with a lot of diseases and disorders. Night sweats? That came with a lot of things as well. Persistent cough? Maybe it would go away if he kept himself hydrated enough. Weight loss? Rashes? All those things pointed to so many things that would eventually go away if he took good enough care of himself. By the time, muscle weakness manifested, it had already been too late. It was only then when they (herself, Ye Xiu and the rest of what comprised of Excellent Era then) pushed him to go see a doctor after all.

The news hit her like a truck. Hodgkin's Lymphoma? Cancer of the lymph nodes and blood? He only had a month left to live? What? Cancer was so overused in dramas but for someone you know to be diagnosed with it by the time they'd reached stage 4? A cancer that weakened the immune system so much so that cancer wouldn't be the only thing he'd come down with that would kill him in the end? A treatment that weakened the immune system even further all while digging them deep into debt, should they choose to pursue it? What? What kind of cruel world-

Maybe, in some parallel world, Su Muqiu wouldn't die from terminal illness. He'd have died in a car accident instead. It was not that much different though. The only thing that changed was that his memory at least lived on in more people. The alliance would have remembered him. It did not make his death any less heartbreaking. He still died. He still died young. He still left his sister in the care of another and he'd still be forced to leave Glory. Death was cruel like that. It did not care if you had family or were alone. It did not care if you were young or old, male or female. It didn't matter, although statistically, males accounted for 55% of the cases of cancer. Even with all the research humanity had put into curing it, even the treatment was still uncertain. It still had no cure, although it could be treated, if that makes any sense.

"Warmth", maybe it wasn't warmth at all. It was a persistent fever that she'd had mistaken for warmth all those years. Of course, that thought hurt so much more since it meant she didn't notice that he even had a fever until it was far too late.

The hospital room was so white, and bare that it was depressing. It was as though the interior designer decided it would be a good idea to remind you that you were in a hospital room and that you'd probably stay there much longer than you'd want, like it was preparing to take you to the afterlife before you even actually died. The lights were dimmed and although the lights were positioned well enough to not be too bright for the occupants, it still made the room depressing. There near the center of the room with the headboard against the wall was the patient's bed where the dying youth lay. In the far end of the room was a window nearby a couch that doubled as a bed should there be family staying. There was a vase on the window sill with no flowers. There were two seats for if there were other visitors and between those was an end table with a glass top framed with mahogany. On the other end of the room was a door as well as the door to the room's bathroom.

Su Mucheng stood beside her brother, her shadow looming over him as the sun slowly set in the window behind her. Ye Xiu placed a hand over her shoulder. A gesture of comfort, for sure, but that didn't mean that it was effective. She held her dying brother's hand in her smaller ones tightly. Her skin was cool in contrast to that of the dying.

Outside the room, there was a sign. "Do not resuscitate" it read to all who passed the room through the corridors. It only meant that if the patient flat lined, they were not to perform procedures that would bring them back. Still, it spoke enough. They wouldn't want to pull the plug but they could only keep this up for so long. That was something all three of the people present in the room had agreed on.


	2. Ch2: Maybe You

Of Silence and Warm Hands ch. 2

Ch2 Maybe you're just not eating enough

There was no need to tell them that they don't eat enough in a day. They ate enough, or at least by the standards of homeless children, they did. Their happy little trio consumed enough carbohydrates to get themselves through the day and ate about three 'meals' a day, other nutrients were probably neglected.

Or at least that's what Ye Xiu usually thought. The boy was surprisingly perceptive, considering his upbringing. He turned his gaze to the boy beside him, happily chatting away as they ate their meals. He wasn't quite sure if he was imagining it, but the lighter haired male seemed to have gotten thinner. It was no secret between the two that Su Muqiu occasionally ate less so his sister would get to eat more consistently, although they tried to keep that a secret from the girl.

The more he thought about it, the more confused he became. He mentally tried to compute for how much Su Muqiu had been eating. He was pretty sure he ate relatively consistently, consuming about the same amount of food a day, on average. Maybe, he had just not been eating enough? Ye Xiu was very sure in that he wasn't sure why the thought that the slightly older boy had been getting thinner. Even when he ate less sometimes, it wasn't supposed to be a large enough difference to cause him to lose weight, was it?

He wasn't sure of what kind of expression he was making at that point, but he'd probably kept it up for a while now, since the Su siblings eventually paused and looked at him, as if expecting him to say something at this point.

"So… Is there something on my face?" Su Muqiu asked, tilting his head to the side like a confused puppy encountering an agitating loud noise for the first time. Well, if someone stared at you for a really long time, wouldn't you think something along those lines as well? Ye Xiu wasn't sure how long he'd been staring at Su Muqiu but he'd probably been staring for a while. The fact that Ye Xiu's cup noodles were mostly still untouched probably made it all the more glaringly obvious that he was inspecting the other boy. Why? Well, to find out why, wasn't that why Su Muqiu had stopped and asked? To know why the darker haired boy was staring at him so intently?

There was a pregnant pause.

"Hey… We spend mostly the same amounts of money on food every day, right?"

Su Muqiu looked at the other boy quizzically. "Yes?-"

Before the lighter haired boy could continue with what he was about to say, Ye Xiu managed to cut him off. "I guess it's just my imagination, then. It's nothing."

He wasn't going to mention it within earshot of Su Mucheng. It was an unspoken rule the two boys shared. Su Muqiu managed to pick up on it, but, well, he didn't really know what it was about his eating that Ye Xiu was going to mention, and so they continued to leisurely chat while eating. The conversation continued. They changed topics enough times that the idea was forgotten….

In the distant future, Ye Xiu would hit himself over this, but, right now, he would dismiss it and eventually forget about it.

 _Maybe, he's just not eating enough?_ He'd told himself before pushing the thought aside. After all, they just had to feed themselves enough. It didn't need too much of a brain to figure out why that was a logical progression of thought. They were basically homeless. Their financial situation didn't need to be questioned; hence, the conclusion was simply maybe that they hadn't been able to spend as much to feed themselves.

Four years later, he'd look back at this moment when he thought that maybe they just weren't eating enough. As he'd eventually find out, the cause of the lighter haired boy's unexplained weight loss wasn't their lack of money for food. Oh, no. It was something far more serious.

At least, when they do find out, they'd have the money they won from the first championship. Much emphasis on at least. Still, that money wouldn't be enough to cure Su Muqiu. Cancer had no cure, but it did have a treatment. Even with treatment, there was no treatment that fixed the patient 100%. There were cases of relapse with people who'd thought they'd already beaten it. There were also cases where, even though the form of cancer diagnosed was the one with the best prognosis, the patient still died.


End file.
